Former SOE boss cancels Kickstarter for new game after six days

The Kickstarter for Hero’s Song, a new rogue-like RPG from former Sony Online Entertainment/Daybreak Studios boss John Smedley, has been cancelled after only six days.

Newly formed Pixelmage Games had hoped to secure funding of $800,000, but in just six days had raised only $136,000. Realising the target would not be reached, Smedley and his team decided to pull the plug.

“After looking at our funding levels and the reality that we aren’t going to reach our funding goals, we’ve decided that the best thing to do is to end the Kickstarter,” wrote Smedley. “We sincerely appreciate all of the support we got from the backers and the Kickstarter community. This was our first Kickstarter and we made mistakes along the way. I want to acknowledge that right up front. We put a lot of time and effort into the Kickstarter, but it’s obvious missing things like physical goods hampered our efforts. It’s also fair to say because we’re early that we didn’t have enough gameplay to show the game off enough to get people over the hump.”

For those of you who liked the sound of Hero’s Song, the good news is that development will continue towards an October launch thanks to Pixelmage’s private investors.

Smedley added: “Well the good news is that our Investors are backing us all the way and we’re going to get Hero’s Song done exactly when we said we would. I’m also happy to say that we’ve been able to do this without having to take money from publishers, something that was of key importance to us so that we could remain in creative control.”

In the original Kickstarter project the team revealed it has already secured over $1 million in investment.

Hero’s Story will launch first for PC on Steam, followed by Mac and potentially consoles later down the line.

Source: Kickstarter